The cute little elves that adorn the sweaters are from the CTMH Cricut Collection Season of Joy! These are the 3-D elves you can make with the cartridge. Use the flatten feature, then print and cut! How simple and fun is that?

Dashing December Specials To Remember!

Story Starter! Save up to 30% off on Story Starter. These are great mini albums to capture special moments: Bridal/Baby Showers, births, girls-night-out, dinner date, retirement gifts, and more. These are awesome for kids to do as well!

Days of December – Capture 31 days of memories with this product bundle. This will make a wonderful family project.

Exciting news – Everyone ordering will get it free Holiday Expressions to add to your order! This is exciting news that they will be GIVING everyone the Idea Book FREE. =) That’s a $3.00 value! Thank you CTMH for doing this!! To view online, click on the image.

Thank you for visiting my corner of the internet. I know that you have lots to do and appreciate your time. Hopefully, you’ll see something that will spark your creative juices! Check out your ugly sweater for inspiration!

Your My Cup of Tea Layout

One of my favorite times of the day is after SG is in bed, all or at least most, of the chores are done, and Jeff makes us tea. S1703 Tea-rrific is the perfect set for me to create a layout capturing this moment in our lives. I need to take the pictures for it however the rest of the layout is complete.

The first page is from our Reflection How To books, Main Frame. The base of the pages is our Kraft Paper which I really like the look of and I need to use more. I stamped and embossed all the images. I painted all the images using our wonderful, magnetic ink pads and our watercolor brushes which are loaded with water, minimizing the mess. You get great color. I did shading by adding color into the different areas of the images where one would expect shading to create more realistic images.

I set up the 2nd page to have two 4×6 pictures which can have flip flaps if necessary. I have it set up on the vertical 4×6 slot. You may be able to see the flip flap on the page (I prefer to set my flaps on the page, cut the page protector, and pull through).

I like the way the embossing looks on the cup. The Basic Mini Pigment Ink Pads work great for this. Ink with Black, use clear embossing powder, and the craft heater. I used the Poppy ink pad for both the cup and the heart on the tea bag. I used the Clear Shimmer Brush to color over the heart on the tea bag to give it a little shimmer.

I love the stacked set of cups. Isn’t it super cute? Paint the different patterns in with Saffron, Juniper, Poppy, Sorbet, and Glacier ink pads. Watercolor painting is so quick and easy using our watercolor brushes that have the water already in them. Just wipe clean between colors. I added the Whisper Twine to the tea bags. I did fussy cut everything out. I’d love to have dies for this set, right?

Speaking of dies – don’t forget that all dies are on sale for 25% off. See below for links.

March is a great month! Here are the links to all of the great specials:

Here’s a card I made using the Masking Technique along with some challenges. I did this a while back but forgot to post it. Here’s the card:

Here are the challenges:

The base of the card is made from using the Chocolate paper from the Fundamental Basic Paper pack. Here is where I used the masking technique to make the leaves look like they come out from behind the rose:

On a side note, I used a gold pen to do some dots in the center of the rose and liquid glass along the white highlights to make them pop a bit. Here are some directions for masking are here. You can download the picture on masking and reference when you need to do it.

Some more fun with this card was using the vellum with gold stripes from my stash along with some shimmer trim and gold sequins!

Looking through the window and seeing a harvest moon is one of my favorite things to see. Creating backgrounds is fun and I used a Cricut cut to make this window and make it look like you were looking outside. The weather is definitely turning here and fall is in full swing. I wanted to capture the “harvest moon” and did so through masking and sponging. I sanded everything down with our sand paper from the sanding kit wrapped around one of the acrylix blocks for stamping (another use for your blocks). That created the distressed or “old” look to all the papers.

I love fall and made this card using Harvest Wreath, D1662 – taking both the fruit and sentiment “Autumn Harvest” from this set. I adore the new colors we added added to the Enchantment color palette…they are really amazing colors for fall.

I cut the window out from the Cricut, using Design Space. When I was checking out the weekly challenge, I realized this card would fit one of the “Heart2Heart Challenges” – Cricut Capers. I linked the card to this one. A couple of my customers asked to learn to make sky backgrounds using sponges and inks.

Part of the window inspiration was to be looking out a Harvest Moon. I added some Wink of Stella to the moon to make it glow. I feel so blessed when I get to see one! I distressed both the Pomegranate panel and the window with our sanding block which is in our Sanding Kit.

I stamped “Autumn Harvest” in chocolate ink and the fruit in a variety of different colored inks. I confess – all the new colors: Poppy, Pomegranate, Fern, Eggplant, and Saffron. Aren’t they just rich and pretty?! I distressed the sentiment with Pomegranate.

I fussy cut the fruit out and clustered it together around the sentiment. When you get a close up, you realize just how awful my fussy cutting is! Move the paper, not the scissors – tip of the day! I need to follow my own advise. Here’s the wonderful stamp set: